Great Wall / Beijing Trip - April, 2007

I had a 3-day layover in Shanghai and decided to go to the Great Wall with Pat, another World F/O. The trip was April 7-9, 2007. We left Shanghai the evening of the 7th on the all night train to Beijing. It's a 12-hour ride from ~7pm to ~7am. The return ride is the same which gave us almost exactly 12 hours in Beijing to do our power sightseeing. The train tickets were a bit pricey at about US$140 round trip each, but that was for the nicest cabin - 4 person soft sleeper.

We got in the morning of the 8th along with about a billion other people, most of whom didn't speak English and none of whom had any concept of personal space (typical in China). We made our way outside and tried to find a good way to get to the wall. There were tours but we also wanted to see Tian'anmen Square and the Forbidden City which made for a pretty tight schedule.

We wound up hiring a driver with a car who agreed to take us to Badaling, wait for us there, and take us back to Beijing whenever we wanted. That worked out well, though it was probably not the most cost effective method (~$50). Unlike Shanghai, there are mountains around Beijing. The scenery at times reminded me of Southern California or maybe New Mexico or Arizona.

We spent a couple hours at the wall. We hiked up the less populated section which turned out to be far more work than we expected. A couple of sections were pretty steep. After we were done, we headed back to Beijing. Unfortunately, we happened upon a car accident right after leaving the Wall which delayed us a couple hours. By the time we got back to Beijing we were hungry so we had the driver drop us off by the Forbidden city and we walked to get some lunch.

After lunch, we thought we'd go check out Tian'anmen and the Forbidden City. Unfortunately, it was already about 4:00 p.m. and we had a 7:00 p.m. train to catch. To make matters worse, we found out they quit letting people in at 3:30 p.m. We wandered around the square some and walked through Zhong Shan Park (very nice).

We did a tea tasting on the way back to the train station which is a story in and of itself... We arrived at the train station in time for our 7pm train back to Shanghai and slept the whole way back. Was a great 12 hours - well worth the trip. Enjoy the photos :)